


rest your head upon my shoulder

by berkingbad



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - College/University, Beaches, Best Friends, College AU, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Graduation, I hope you like it, M/M, Road Trips, Uni AU, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, it ended at the beach where i spent one of my last nights of college, it started out as a road trip ficlet, larry stylinson - Freeform, this all happened because it was 2am and i couldn't sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 03:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4084840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berkingbad/pseuds/berkingbad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the night before graduation, and Harry’s scared he missed his chance to tell his best friend that he loves him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rest your head upon my shoulder

**Author's Note:**

> so this all started because i couldn't sleep at 2am and i was having a lot of ~feelings  
> so here's this oneshot ficlet: the night before graduation, and louis takes harry on one last adventure.  
> it ends up better than harry could've ever expected.
> 
> thank you for reading!!! if you liked it please leave kudos and/or a comment!
> 
> title from the song "is there somewhere" by halsey
> 
> tumblr: kirklandhouse (personal) /leedsboys (larry)  
> twitter: @harrilocks
> 
> all the love  
> x

  
  


*

 

It’s quarter to midnight, and Harry is lying flat on his back in the center of his mattress, limbs sprawled out, blankets half on the floor. He’s staring up at the ceiling, at the angled square where the light from the streetlamp outside his window comes through and forms that same shape every single night. On good nights, when he can sleep, he doesn’t see it for long. But on nights like tonight, he studies it as the hours pass, memorizes the shape and its position on the speckled ceiling.

 

How did he get here? Harry turns his head and glances at the clock resting on the windowsill; the makeshift bedside table. In fourteen minutes it’ll be his graduation day. Finished with uni forever. To say that the past four years have been formative would be a drastic understatement. Uni shaped Harry, turned him into who he is today. Before that first stomach-knotting day freshman year, he was freshly eighteen and still too young to know the world. Now, he’s changed. His hair is longer - much longer - and his face has become squarer and his body has grown taller, stronger, wider and his arm has become nearly covered in tattoos.

 

Ah, the tattoos. The first one was his own idea, the outline of a star to remind himself of all the nights he spent back home with Gemma when they were young, watching the night sky, waiting for a meteor shower or a shooting star or the tiny bright speck that was a planet very far away, further away than either of them could really comprehend. But upon seeing Harry’s tattoo, his roommate - whom he hadn’t known before but apparently they had been to the same concert once - declared that he must have one as well, and proceeded to get a set of tiny screws on his ever-exposed ankles. It had been an avalanche after that.

 

Harry rolls over onto his stomach, hugging his pillow tightly beneath his head. When he first met the boy who was to be his freshman year roommate, he had no idea, not even a fraction of one, that the spunky kid who was too loud for his size would come to mean so much to him. He’d had no idea that eventually, one day, four years later, he would be lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering when exactly it was that he’d fallen in love with Louis Tomlinson.

 

Suddenly, three sharp knocks on his door jolt him from his thoughts.

 

Speak of the devil.

 

“Yeah,” Harry mumbles, pushing his hair out of his face as he turned his head to better see the door as it cracks open, revealing Louis’ familiar silhouette in the yellow light of the hallway.

 

“Oi, what are you doing?”

 

“Sleeping?”

 

“Nah, no way, mate. Get up, we’re going out,” says Louis firmly.

 

Harry twists and sits up. “It’s like midnight.”

 

“Yeah,” Louis says simply, because obviously it’s midnight.

 

“We have to graduate tomorrow.”

 

“Which is exactly why we’re going out. Now. Get up, lazy.”

 

Harry drops back down against his mattress. “I’m tired.”

 

But, to be honest, there was a certain familiar feeling of butterflies beating against his skin from the inside, right beneath where he happened to have a butterfly tattooed on himself. And, to be even more honest, he was nervous about listening to what those butterflies wanted him to do. Which was go. With Louis. Now.

 

Harry heard a few quick footsteps and then he’s being dragged off his mattress, and he only just manages to catch himself before his knees hit the floor. He straightens up and Louis is standing in front of him, arms crossed over his chest. He’s in a black t-shirt and those horrifically baggy sweatpants that only he could make look good, and that had a 100% success rate in distracting Harry from whatever he happened to be doing at the time Louis was wearing them.

 

“We’re going, Haz,” Louis says, more quietly now. “It’s our last night, we gotta go out with a bang, as they say.”

 

Louis’ head turns as he searches Harry’s room for a pair of jeans. He picks up a pair that were tossed over the back of the chair and tosses them into Harry’s hands.

 

“Meet you outside in two minutes, yeah?”

 

Harry finds himself nodding. “Yeah, alright.”

 

A minute and thirty seconds later - Harry always preferred to be early rather than late - Harry shut the front door behind him and finds Louis leaning up against Harry’s car, face illuminated by his phone. Louis looks up, clicks his phone off, and drops it into his pocket.

 

“Hope you brought your keys, you’re driving.” Louis smiles wickedly.

 

“Where exactly are we going?” Harry asks, but he holds up his keys, which are looped over his index finger, making a metallic clinking noise against his ring.

 

Louis shrugs as he makes his way around the front of the car to the passenger side. “Dunno yet, figured we’d sort that out on the way.”

 

*

 

The streets are deserted this time of night, except for the occasional passing pair of headlights. Louis had turned the radio on, decided he hated all of the songs that were playing, and had switched it to CD all within the first ninety seconds of the ride.

 

“Hey, is this the mix I made you freshman year? For that bloody stupid bonding exercise the RA made everyone do?”

 

Harry feels heat rush to his cheeks and is suddenly thankful that it was dark and Louis probably can’t see him.

 

“Yeah, I was sick of all my other albums, so…”

 

“That’s sick, mate, I forgot about this!” Louis says excitedly, turning the volume up a good five notches.

 

Harry smiles, glancing over to watch Louis dance in his seat.

 

“Oi, eyes on the road, Haz, I’m not interested in dying the night before I finally finish uni. And I’m a rubbish dancer anyway.”

 

Harry opens his mouth to deny it, and say that in fact he thinks Louis is a damn good dancer, but Louis interrupts with, “Oh, turn here! Yeah, right right right, good.”

 

Harry barely slows down in time to make the turn, but then they’re on a narrow road without any streetlights. Louis rolls his window down and Harry could’ve sworn he smells the sea. He has no idea whatsoever where they were or where they were going, but Louis seems pretty confident in his navigational skills, and if Harry’s learned anything in the past four years, it’s to trust Louis.

 

*

 

Harry pulls the car into a deserted parking lot, swerving around the barrier that doesn’t entirely block off the entrance, and stops.

 

“Here?” he asks for confirmation.

 

“Aye, captain,” Louis says, saluting him before he clambers out of the car.

 

Harry hurriedly kills the engine and gets out. Louis is already making his way towards the dimly lit buildings - beach cabanas. Harry catches up to him quickly, their shoes crunching against the sandy pavement, and Louis looks over at him. Harry’s expecting the same wicked smile as before, but this time it’s softer, and it changes everything.

 

Once they reach the edge of the sand, Louis stops abruptly, grabbing Harry’s arm for balance as he tugs off his Vans and drops them unceremoniously onto the ground. Harry does the same with his boots, placing them with a bit more care next to Louis’ shoes, and then they head into the sand.

 

It’s cold under Harry’s feet and between his toes, and the feeling sends a shiver up his spine. He doesn’t look up from the sand until they’re about halfway towards the sea, where the white of the waves is all that’s easily visible in the darkness. He’s overwhelmed by the sheer size of it - it spreads out on either side of him for as far as he can see, these waves crashing up onto the sand, then retreating back into the ocean, taking some sand and rocks with them each time. He looks up at the sky; the moon is almost full, but not quite, and it’s surrounded by tiny pinpricks of varying degrees of light.

 

The sky is massive, the sea is massive, and Harry feels very, very small. He closes his eyes and listens to the waves, just listens, and then --

 

“Haz,” he hears a quiet voice in his ear, and he keeps his eyes shut.

 

“Yeah, Lou.”

 

“It’s really something, isn’t it?”

 

Harry nods, inhaling the chilly, salty air. It fills his lungs and it feels something like hope, something like future, something like his life is about to change and even though he has no idea what’s coming next, somehow it’ll be okay.

 

He opens his eyes and sees Louis standing beside him, staring out at the sea. The moon is giving off just enough light to reflect off Louis’ eyes, and Harry feels like his chest might explode. He’s suddenly very aware of how close Louis is next to him, and he swears he can smell the faintest hint of Louis’ cologne mixed in with the salty breeze.

 

Harry watches him for a few moments longer, then sits on the sand, criss-crossing his legs and leaning back on his hands. Louis follows suit.

 

“Lou,” Harry says.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“For what?” Louis is still gazing out at the sea, his hair blowing off his face in the breeze.

 

“Bringing me here, waking me up, you know. Not letting me sleep my last night of uni.”

 

“Would’ve made for a boring story, yeah?” Louis laughs and looks over at him, and Harry’s heart swells again.

 

They fall silent, and Harry turns back to the sea, finding the rhythm of the tide comforting. In this moment, when not much is certain, at least this is. This global, powerful force.

 

Harry thinks back to freshman year, when Louis turned up at their room with a girl named Eleanor, and he remembers vividly how far down his heart had dropped. He thinks back to a month later, when he had been cramming for an exam, and Louis came back to the room drunk as hell and asked Harry to “cuddle” (Louis’ words, not his). Harry had, of course, obliged, ended up falling asleep in Louis’ arms, and failed his exam the next day, but it was absolutely, one hundred percent worth it. He remembers how Louis’ arms stayed wrapped around him throughout the entire night, and how he had woken up with Louis’ chin resting on his shoulder, their bodies pressed together without a centimeter of space between them, their breathing in sync, and Harry remembers that moment being the happiest he had ever felt.

 

He thinks back to sophomore year, when he and Louis had gotten an off-campus apartment together, and every morning he cooked the pair of them breakfast, and every night he cooked them both dinner, and after that they would fall asleep in Harry’s bed watching Seinfeld on Netflix. Louis was usually gone when Harry woke up, he’d had early morning footie practices most days, but he always came back for breakfast. The three lads who lived next door usually came over for breakfast as well, claiming none of them knew how to cook and they had forgotten to buy cereal, and Harry happily cracked a few extra eggs over the pan. It felt like family, it felt like home, the five of them sitting around their tiny kitchen table, eating eggs and toast and sometimes bacon if someone had just gotten paid. And then Zayn, Niall, and Liam would leave for class, and Louis would do the washing up, and Harry would watch him with an embarrassingly fond smile on his face, and then they would leave for class, forever orbiting each other, forever magnetized.

 

He thinks back to junior year, when the five of them had moved in together and it was almost like the Brady Bunch, all these different people and personalities squished into this tiny house, and they all had too much stuff, but it all somehow fit and came together and felt exactly like home. Niall’s guitar had its corner, Louis’ football was always under a table, Liam had his weights in a row outside his door and everyone, at one point, had tripped over them in a flurry of curse words as they stumbled through the dark to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Zayn’s art ended up all over the house, some of it hung up on walls, some of it leaned up from the floor, and Harry’s presence was materialized in small touches: a vase in the living room, a framed photo of the five of them hung up in the kitchen, his faux-leather-bound journal usually marking the spot where he had been last.

 

Harry thinks back to this past year, senior year, when he was overloaded with classes and Louis was hardly ever around between classes and footie practice, and when he was around, his eyes were puffy from exhaustion, and they didn’t have time for family breakfast or family dinner or Seinfeld until they fell asleep. The three lads from next door still lived with them, but they were usually apart, no longer the three musketeers that Harry had grown used to, and Harry remembers feeling like he had lost something, or like something had gone missing, and he had this sinking feeling in his chest like he wasn’t going to get it back.

 

And then this past week had happened. Everyone was done with class and exams and all that was left were five days until graduation. Five days of freedom, which for most of them, meant five days of sleeping as much as they wanted to. They had all gone out to the movies, they’d even tried their hand at bowling (a catastrophe, except for Liam), and every single time Harry’s eyes met Louis’, he’d felt that same spark, like something was igniting deep in his chest and filling him up with warmth from the inside out. Louis’ eyes had lingered, like they used to, but Harry couldn’t even remember the last time they had fallen asleep to Seinfeld.

 

“Haz.” Louis’ voice breaks through Harry’s thoughts, jerking him back into the present. The salty breeze, the sound of the ocean, the feeling of the cold sand beneath him.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Louis shifts over so he can lean his head on Harry’s shoulder.

 

“I miss you,” Louis says softly, his voice smaller and quieter than Harry’s ever heard it.

 

“I’m right here,” Harry says, but he knows exactly what Louis means. He’s felt it too, every day since things had faded and dulled and it felt like they’d burned out right in front of him.

 

Harry feels Louis shake his head against his shoulder. “I know. I mean, like… I miss us. From before.”

 

Harry stays silent; there are too many words bubbling up inside of him and he doesn’t know which of them to choose, so he goes with the safest option: none.

 

“I miss this,” Louis says, moving even closer so that their sides are flush against each other, no space between them, just their shared body heat transferring back and forth. Harry feels Louis’ arm against his, their tattoos lining up perfectly.

 

Harry reaches out and traces his fingers along Louis’ skin until he finds the compass tattoo.

 

“Tell me why you got this,” he says quietly, fingers moving in circles, tracing the edge of the compass.

 

“Ah,” Louis says, shaking his head a bit against Harry’s shoulder, embarrassment flooding his voice.

 

Harry waits, keeps tracing circles, revels in the closeness and the feeling of Louis. Of his best friend.

 

“Are you gonna tell me or what?” Harry asks gently.

 

“‘Cause you’re my home,” Louis mumbles, pulling his arm up so that he grabs Harry’s hand. He holds it tight, lacing their fingers together.

 

Harry feels his pulse in his whole body, his fingertips, his toes in the sand, pounding in his head. He’s never felt this weightless, this grounded, this purely alive. He squeezes Louis’ hand and shrugs his shoulder the tiniest bit so that Louis will look at him. Focusing on the moonlight reflected in Louis’ eyes, Harry says lowly, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”

 

Louis smiles crookedly. “Think I do, Haz.”

 

All of a sudden, Harry’s meeting Louis halfway and they’re kissing - mouths pressed together and it’s warm and soft and Harry thinks there are tiny fireworks exploding in his brain. He takes his hand out of Louis’ and moves it to Louis’ neck, tugging a little on his hair. Louis’ mouth opens in response, and the kiss deepens, finding its rhythm, just like the sea.

 

Louis tastes like spearmint and cinnamon and cigarettes (but only a tiny bit) and the smell of the salt in the air bleeds into the taste and it’s all Harry’s ever wanted and all he never even knew he wanted, to be here with Louis, kissing on the sand of a closed beach, the two of them all alone under the moonlight and the countless clusters of stars.

 

In this moment, Harry realizes: he fell in love with Louis when he first met him in the toilets of their dorm building their freshman year of uni, before they even knew they’d been assigned to be roommates.

 

Harry pulls away just enough to catch his breath, pressing his forehead to Louis’.

“Oops,” he says, lips brushing against Louis’.

 

Louis laughs. “Hi.”

 

*

 

 


End file.
